November 08, 2011

SEEN & NOTED: NEW YORK —UNIQLO, a leading Japanese retailer that designs, manufactures, and sells casual apparel, has expanded its presence in the US with the addition of two new retail locations in Manhattan with a new 89,000 square foot flagship store on New York’s famed Fifth Avenue and a location on 34th Street near Herald Square. With the opening of the new Fifth Avenue location, UNIQLO's has become the single largest retailer on Fifth Avenue. UNIQLO opened its first store in New York's SoHo district in 2006, and has also expanded to London in 2007, Paris in 2009, Shanghai and Osaka in 2010, and Taipei in September 2011. The design concept of the Fifth Avenue store will become a model for future UNIQLO stores that open in other cities.

Outside UNIQLO's new Fifth Avenue location, shoppers are entertained by two custom floor to ceiling LED video walls within the store's glass elevators. The elevators are visible from the street to traffic and passersby on Fifth Avenue as they move up and down. The storefront's Fifth Avenue side also include LED displays in the windows at street level which create additional energy. On the store's north facing side along 53rd street, six large LCD video displays play motion content two stories above the street, the content is also synced to the displays playing inside the store. The LED displays and video content running throughout UNIQLO's in-store network were developed by PlayNetwork in conjunction with its partner D3 LED, LLC. As customers move through the store's interior they enter into a multimedia experience that's amplified by more than 400 LCD video displays, many arranged in video wall and video column configurations. D3 LED also installed an LED news ticker inside a mirrored corridor on the store's upper level. The store's display systems are paired with more than 175 audio speakers that envelope customers in a wave of sight and sound. Music can also be heard as customers ride the escalators thanks to speakers hidden from view within the store's columns. PlayNetwork's engineering team also created a custom, one-piece mount for multiple screens to facilitate installation and maintenance of the video walls.

To celebrate the New York store openings, UNIQLO has launched a number of exciting partnerships and activities around the city that will take place in the coming weeks including support of a new, outdoor roller-skating rink below the recently opened High Line park, several pop-up shops and additional special events.